


More Things in Heaven and Earth

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who, Numb3rs
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-01
Updated: 2009-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:12:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Larry Fleinhardt, The Doctor, a sense of wonder, and alien planets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Things in Heaven and Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Contains Mild-to-moderate spoilers for _Numb3rs_ season 3. Thanks to Izhilzha for giving this the once-over and reassuring me that it doesn't miss the mark too badly in terms of canon and characterization, despite the gaps in my knowledge.

"My own suspicion," said the great naturalist J.B.S. Haldane, "is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we _can_ suppose." It's one of those pithy aphorisms we scientists love to quote, although many people do it inaccurately, with "stranger" for "queerer" and "imagine" instead of "suppose." Which I suppose -- or imagine -- is forgivable. It is, after all, a perfectly reasonable paraphrase. And language evolves; words take on new connotations and come to be used in different ways... Still, I tend to be something of a purist in such matters myself. Well, sometimes. I certainly don'tforgive people who misattribute the quote to Sir Arthur Eddington. That man deserves to be remembered for the things he actually _did_ say.

Haldane himself was a brilliant and a highly witty fellow. Most famously, on being asked what his studies revealed about the nature of God, he's said to have replied that the Creator seems to have "an inordinate fondness for beetles." Isn't that marvelous? An inordinate fondness for beetles. It's hard to argue with that conclusion, presupposing the existence of such a Supreme Being, of course. There are something on the order of 350,000 known species of beetle, and the as-yet undiscovered varieties may outnumber the known ones by several million.

Which brings me back to the point I started out trying to make. Even just on this one tiny planet, there are still so many unknowns. Both here on this precious blue-green speck and out there in the great vastness of the cosmos, there are so many things whose existence we can only deduce or hypothesize... or imagine. It's a testament to the power of human reason that despite our limited senses and incomplete knowledge we can achieve such profound understanding of this profoundly strange universe. But there are some things so ineffable, so startling that their discovery can reduce even a mind which readily accepts such ludicrously counter-intuitive concepts as quantum superposition or the twin paradox to a sort of mute, overwhelmed awe. It's a case, as someone _not_ J.B.S. Haldane once said, of paradigm shifting without a clutch.

Oh, dear. That didn't really bring me to the point at all, did it? No, here I am circling the point like some tidally-locked satellite: always facing it, always drawn inexorably toward it, but never moving any closer on timescales a human being can actually perceive. And here I thought that writing this down, trying to shape the experience and its effects and meanings into words, would help me clarify my thoughts.

Ordinarily, I would seek that clarity in talking with others, if I proved unable to find it in myself. Charlie, Meghan, trusted colleagues and friends. But this is something so much larger, so much stranger... It's not one of those instances where I know what the right words are when I hear myself say them. This time I have to know what they are in order to say them at all.

Besides, there are other considerations. Is this even something I _should _speak about? I've lived my life in the conviction that knowledge and understanding should be used and shared, especially the kind of knowledge that helps us better understand ourselves and our place in the universe. Evidence of the existence of alien life? Dear Lord, you don't cover that up! You shout it triumphantly from the rooftops!

And yet, I see two possibilities should I do any rooftop shouting. The first is that people don't believe me. I certainly couldn't blame them; _I_ wouldn't believe me, not without extraordinary evidence to back up my extraordinary claims. I then quickly discover that the scientific community regards me as a laughingstock and the only publication that will accept me is the_ National Inquirer_, and probably only when they run out of Bigfoot stories. I could accept that, I think, but the thought that my friends would be forced to either dissociate themselves from me or suffer ridicule by association is... hard. Very hard.

Alternatively, I might, by some fluke of probability, be believed. In which case, I ask myself: if I'm not delusional -- a possibility I have considered and choose to at least provisionally reject -- if there really is a time-travelling alien who repeatedly saves this planet from disaster, then is it in fact a good idea to call attention to him, to do anything that might interfere with him, or even just to _annoy_ him? Because, based on admittedly short acquaintance and my own intuitive assessment of his personality, I really don't think he'd appreciate the publicity. And I have to say, I do respect that.

Oh, and look, I said it! "Time-travelling alien." Hmm. No, it really doesn't look any less unlikely written down.

**

_"Doctor," said Rose. "Why is there an astronaut in here?" _

_"Is this some kind of riddle?" asked the Doctor. "Like, why did the Sontaran throw the clock out of the window? Because I'm a bit busy right now. In case you didn't notice, we came too bloody close to colliding with that space shuttle." He thwacked a control on the console. "I think her spatial calibrators need readjusting. Again."_

_"Obviously _something_ needs readjusting. If you've got a 'make some bloke in a spacesuit appear out of nowhere' button on there, that's probably it."_

_"Rose, what are you...?" The Doctor's annoyed response trailed off as he turned around. "Oh. It's a bloke in a spacesuit. That shouldn't have happened." He smiled, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. "Well, at least we materialized around him, instead of hitting him. Could have been messy, otherwise."_

_The man in the spacesuit slowly took off his helmet and looked at them, wide-eyed. "Hello," he said. He swallowed. "Either my life support is failing and this is an extremely detailed anoxic hallucination, or else this is the single most profound moment of my entire life."_

_Rose giggled. "Ooh, Doctor, I think you've got a fan!"_

_The Doctor glared at her._

**

There are no words to describe the experience of standing on an alien planet, surrounded by alien life, alien geography, alien beauty. Oh, it's possible to describe the landscape, to estimate the gravitational forces, to sketch the shape of the leaves on the plants. Which I did, of course. But the _experience_... Have you ever seen the movie _Contact_, O hypothetical reader? It was based on the novel of the same name by Carl Sagan. Now _there_ was a man who knew how to communicate the wondrous so that anyone could understand it. The cinematic version plays a bit loose with the details of radio astronomy, not to mention the geography of the American Southwest, but it's nevertheless a thought-provoking film. There's a scene where the hero, Ellie Arroway, first travels through a wormhole, suddenly emerging to find herself in a realm far beyond all previous human experience. She looks out at that majesty, at that beautiful, incredible new corner of the universe spread out before her, and the only words she has are, "They should have sent a poet."

I, whatever other gifts I may or may not be blessed with, am certainly no poet. For all my practicality-based arguments about the pros and cons of going public with the things I've seen, there may be a much simpler, much more profound reason why I've kept my silence as long as I have. In the face of the truly ineffable, how can the appropriate and respectful response be anything _other_ than silence? My instincts as a scientist may always be to quantify, to describe, but perhaps my soul -- whether that word describes an emergent property of neural structure or some transcendent metaphysical entity -- knows more about such things than my conscious mind can articulate.

**

_The astronaut, helmet off now, ran his fingers frantically through his thinning hair. "No! No, no, no, no, no! You can't-- You _cannot_ tell me that you are an alien who, who travels through time and space, and then just take me back and tell me to forget about it! I mean yes, current theory suggests that time travel may be possible without any violation to the known laws of physics, but the practical stumbling blocks are, well, they're astronomical! More than astronomical. 'Cosmic' might be a more appropriate word."_

_The Doctor smirked. "Yep, that's me. Cosmic. Put your helmet back on. Don't want your head exploding when I put you back on your spacewalk."_

_"I think his head's already exploding," observed Rose._

_"And you're seriously telling me that this, this ship can materialize anywhere in time and space? Anywhere at all? That's... It's..." His mouth worked, but no longer seemed capable of making sounds._

_"Difficult to believe?" said the Doctor. "Good thing I'm not asking you to, then. Come on. Helmet."_

_"That's so _wonderful_," the astronaut finished, finally, in a tone of hushed awe. "That's the most beautiful, amazing thought."_

_"Aww," said Rose. "Can't we give him a quick spin around the universe? He's got really cute puppy-dog eyes."_

_"Well," said the Doctor, "maybe just a _quick_ trip. Fancy seeing the ice jungles of Nektekon II?"_

_The astronaut swallowed hard. "Please?"_

**

Out of all the things I saw, all the thoughts and experiences and adventures, there is one moment, one small observation that keeps coming back into my mind. In the midst of so much alienness, it was such an incredibly _human_ thing...

As I stood there on that first planet, in that first hour, wordless as the fictional Dr. Arroway, consumed with wonder, I turned to the Doctor, doubtless with everything I was unable to say written all over my face. And the Doctor -- this ancient, unimaginably powerful alien, this entity who, I would later learn, had seen the beginning and the end of the universe, who had watched civilizations rise and fall and rise -- the Doctor looked at me, and this _gleam_ came into his eyes. He looked slowly around him, then back at me, and it was as if he were seeing this planet, perhaps seeing humanity, again for the first time. And he said, "Yeah. Not bad, huh?"

It's possible that understatement is yet another means of saying things too complex to be put into words, and too close to the heart to be expressed in mathematics.

**

_"Are you sure you don't want to stay?" asked Rose. "Just a little longer?"_

_"No. I mean, yes. I mean, oh, yes, I do want to stay. A part of me would like nothing more than to keep doing this forever. But... Well, it's all very Joseph Campbell, isn't it? You know, the Hero's Journey... Not that I'd describe myself as a hero. But I do think there are great insights to be gleaned from the patterns of storytelling and mythology, and one of them is that no journey is ever really complete until the traveler returns home. Does that make sense?"_

_The Doctor's eyes were unreadable. "Yeah," he said at last, his voice serious and soft. "Yeah. That makes sense." And he handed Larry his helmet._

**

I'm not really sure whether or not writing his has helped. No, no, I lie. It _has _helped. I can feel that it has. I'm just not entirely sure _how_. I still haven't made the decision that I was hoping to make.

But I feel slightly calmer now. More... Well, "centered" is probably the word, even if it is a little cliché. Having gotten this far, I think perhaps I'm ready now to be silent for a while, not for the world, but for myself. To spend some time contemplating the things I've seen and what they mean. To simply _be_, for a while. To be Larry Fleinhardt, to be a human being fixed in space and time. To learn how to be part of the Earth again before I start attempting to change it.

And while I'm doing all of that, I can comfort myself in the knowledge that there is an entire cosmos out there waiting for us. Not simply the cold, glittering void visible to us from Earth, beautiful as that is, but a warm, breathing universe, full of life, and mind, and wonder. And whether I'm the one to introduce humanity to that knowledge or whether that will be my own cosmic secret to hold, we _will_ be part of that universe, in time. I have always believed that, always had an unapologetic, unscientific faith in the future, in the power of life, in the strength of the human mind and the capacity of the human heart. But now I've seen that belief confirmed -- gloriously, magnificently confirmed! -- with first-hand empirical proof.

I'm not sure how knowledge like that changes a man. But I do believe that I'm looking forward to finding out.


End file.
